No, she would not consult Paul, Paul would of course let her decide for him,--and she did beg that no one would interfere with what after all was _her_ affair. Presently it was, "Paul will stay on here with us at present. He has no real claims upon him elsewhere, for as we are not to be married just yet, he can postpone making his arrangements. Perhaps we shall now be able to get a house first." To this end she ordered down agents' lists, and illustrated magazines; also Leo came upon her in odd places posing meditatively before various articles of furniture with a paper and pencil in her hand. Leo guessed what she was doing. She took no notice; but she wondered if any one could help noticing that, whereas Paul when he first appeared on the scene had been eager and animated over the home he hoped to form, and the life he meant to lead, he was listless and indifferent now. He assented to everything, initiated nothing. Sometimes he barely glanced at the attractive domain whose allurements were so cunningly set forth--sometimes he hung over the page so long that Leo could not help suspecting it was but a screen to hide his face. He had lost altogether his pleasant habit of following each speaker with his eyes as the talk went round. The eyes would be glued to the floor, or fixed vacantly on some object. He would start when called to order for inattention, and thereafter be abjectly attentive. But whatever Maud said was right, and her wishes were law. She could not make a suggestion which he was not ready to carry out; when she withdrew from it herself he as readily withdrew. To Leo, watching from the background, there was something unnatural, incomprehensible about it all--something which baffled her closest scrutiny--and yet at times made her feel as though the scrutiny itself were but foolishness, emanating from her own disordered imagination. She would think so for a whole day, and school herself to believe that it was a happy day--and then something, some trifle, would occur which made her heart leap and her hands tremble, and she found herself talking for dear life in a meaningless jumble of words. She would not, must not, dared not hope that Paul repented of his choice, unless it might be that repentance were mutual, in which case? But after a night of fitful sleep and miserable awakenings, Leo would come down heavy-eyed and feverish, to find a prosaic, business-like dialogue being carried on by the very individuals who had figured so differently in the phantasms of the small hours, and her entrance would hardly be noticed by either, so engrossed were they by each other.